Social Media Tools and Resources for Social Learning

This past week I, together with my friend Shari Rager from American Medical Writers Association, did a session at Tagoras’s Learning*Technology*Design conference on designing for social learning. Of course I meant to blog about it before it happened, but we all know how that goes…so I figure better late than never.

This was the session description:

While social learning and social media are different things, the two go hand in hand. Associations have always been in the social learning business, but social media is new to many associations and often considered the domain of the marketing or communications department alone. This session will explore social learning, how social media technologies can be an intentional part of your organization’s overall learning toolset, and ways to design social learning interactions so learners get the best out of the experience.

I created this resource list to accompany the presentation, which I figure I’d share here on Mizz Information since social media and social learning are hot topics in the association world. Here’s a link to the list, which includes articles on social learning and the difference between social media and social learning, then a list of social media tools and platforms that I think go hand-in-hand with social learning.

Articles about social learning and the difference between social media and social learning

Symplur–this is a great, free resource for healthcare or medical-focused associations, as well as a great example of the power of Twitter to advance collaboration and learning around specific topics. Even if your association isn’t in the healthcare space, take a look around Symplur to get an idea of the ways organizations and individuals use hashtags to connect and share information and ideas around specific topics. If your association is in the healthcare space, be sure to register your org’s conference hashtag to take advantage of Symplur’s great free features, including transcripts of tweets and other analytics.

Hashtracking—Hashtracking is a free tool (well, free with limited capabilities) that lets you track your event’s hashtag across Twitter and Instagram and access analytics around influencers, number of tweets and other insights. There are lots of paid social media listening and analytics platforms out there, but Hashtracking is good to try if you’re just getting started and/or don’t have any resources dedicated to social media.

Twitter–In case you’re still holding out, thinking Twitter is just people talking about what they ate for lunch, it’s time to get past that! Twitter is one of the best tools for social learning and collaboration, enabling associations to both follow conversations around topics of interest to members and to lead those conversations by establishing hashtags around events, topics of interest, or specific learning objectives. If you’re not familiar with #assnchat–no, it’s not a dirty word!–it’s a weekly Twitter chat for people and organizations in the association sector. Or #Eventprofs, for event and learning professionals. What hashtags do your members use to connect and collaborate with each other?

Blab—Blab is a livestreaming platform that enables a public video chat among four participants at a time. If you are familiar with the likes of Periscope, Meerkat and Google Hangouts, it basically combines all three. Here are some good beginner tips on using Blab; here’s a great video on how associations can use Blab. And you can see it in action each week with #assnchat.

Breezio—Breezio is a new private community platform that I’m kind of obsessed with, and that I think is a great example of how private community platforms can be used to enable social learning. This brief video illustrates how it works. Even if your organization doesn’t use this platform (it’s brand new and costs money) it can give you some good ideas about how you can use your organization’s existing community platform to engage members around content and to foster social learning. Higher Logic’s HUG is another great example–if your organization has a private online community and you’re looking for ways to encourage members to use it to collaborate and learn from each other, take a look around HUG for some ideas.

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The SocialFish blog is the longest established industry social/digital blog for associations and nonprofits. We have been thinking and writing--and inviting guests to share their thoughts too--about the effect of the digital revolution on how we work since we started this blog in 2007. Needless to say, every author's opinions are their own.

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